Slashdot Log In
Why Do Computers Take So Long to Boot Up?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Dec 10, 2006 08:48 PM
from the tired-hampsters dept.
from the tired-hampsters dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Computers take too long to boot up, and it doesn't make sense to me. Mine takes around 30 seconds; it is double or triple that for some of my friends' computers that I have used. Why can't a computer turn on and off in an instant just like a TV? 99% of boots, my computer is doing the exact same thing. Then I get to Windows XP with maybe 50 to 75 megs of stuff in memory. My computer should be smart enough to just load that junk into memory and go with it. You could put this data right at the very start of the hard drive. Whenever you do something with the computer that actually changes what happens during boot, it could go through the real booting process and save the results. Doing this would also give you instant restarts. You just hit your restart button, the computer reloads the memory image, and you can be working again. Or am I wrong? Why haven't companies made it a priority to have 'instant on' desktops and laptops?"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
hum (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
The only time I hibernate now is when my carpool is leaving and I need to shut down my laptop quick and don't have time to shut down everything. Standby isn't bad, but any savings that hibernate gives you are short lived.
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, it should be noted that there IS a way to have Windows leave the hibernation file alone unless you tell it to hibernate again; that is, a hibernate once, resume many kind of situation. It's a trick often used when building a car PC. You get the system to the point where you'd want the system to start from, then tell it to hibernate. From then on, it'll resume from that spot. If you can get your system to work properly with hibernation, it's just about as fast as you'll ever get it to boot.
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Informative)
And if you really want to speed up the bootprocess on some system have a look at the linuxbios project, if you mainboard is supported that is.
And some hints on how to speed up the bios "boot":
- Hard-configure the HD's you have in your system and deactivate any unused master/slave positions.
- If running PATA make shure master/slave is connected to the correct position on the cable and use the jumper to set it to master or slave instead of autodetect.
- Activate fast-boot
- Disable anything you dont use on the mainboard, if running linux check if you can disable IDE controllers you dont use for booting, some might still be usable after booting the OS.
- Activate fast-boot, on a warm-boot there are alot of tests that can be skipped.
- If you have any bootable cards in the system disable their boot-bios so they dont have to be scanned during the POST.
Just a few hints.
Parent
Because coffee takes that long to brew (Score:5, Informative)
Linux on an embedded system configured for fast booting(without plug and play peripherals etc) can boot in 2 seconds or so.
Parent
Re:They have instant coffee now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, you want an OS that does exactly what you want at boot time? Use Unix. You want something that works reasonably without you having to mess with it? Use Windows. Don't blame Microsoft for your own poor choices.
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Not just memory and registers (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem of booting up like this is that the contents of memory and cpu registers isn't enough. The hardware has to be properly initialized as well. Since the internal state of the drivers indicates that has already been done, a consistent mechanism to force re-initialization of all hardware has to be in place after the system reloads the image. That might take as long as a normal boot does.
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:hum (Score:4, Informative)
There is one issue I had at one point which is that my nVidia video drivers would BSOD on resuming, but updating them fixed that and I'm pretty sure they've fixed it completely in their newer cards.
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Informative)
Or linux with 'init=/bin/sh'. Only takes a couple of seconds on my machine.
Parent
Re:hum (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
You haven't asked before (Score:5, Funny)
boot time (Score:4, Informative)
If you want a quick start, just use sleep mode. Takes very little power and you're up in seconds.
Re:boot time (Score:4, Insightful)
>the hardware. Reducing the kernel and libraries to an image might speed things
>up, but not by much
I completely disagree. It takes very little time to initialize hardware and a whole lot of time to load software. For instance, when I just installed xp64 after my last upgrade, the system would be up and running in about 20 seconds. Now that I've been running the machine for 6 or 7 months and have been through a few cycles of installing, removing, and upgrading various pieces of software (with notable differences made upon the installation of adobe and microsoft productivity apps), it takes closer to 40-50 seconds to boot. And that's with absolutely no change in the hardware configuration.
Parent
fast booting TVs ? (Score:5, Interesting)
My new HDTV takes about a minute to boot. Something about an ATI bios
Maybe it's just Windows XP? (Score:4, Interesting)
Regardless, NetBSD is the fasted of the three. It takes a little over 6 seconds from power-on to the login screen. FreeBSD takes 11 seconds. Solaris is a bit longer, clocking in a 14 seconds. I know these times because I was curious of this question as well, and so I did the timings. All three systems are basically the default installs, plus whatever initialization file changes there have been from installing various pieces of software.
Solaris does start into X, so that may be why it takes longer. Still, adding the 2 or so seconds it starts to get X running, NetBSD and FreeBSD are still less than Solaris.
Hardware and Security (Score:5, Informative)
First, let's say that you upgrade some hardware. There will be no way for the OS to know that there's new hardware unless it goes through the hardware detection and configuration stages of bootup, which is what takes most of the time. Worse, if it doesn't do this, the system will probably just crash, as the memory image loaded will have the wrong set of drivers installed and they'll be pointing at the wrong set of hardware addresses.
Second, and this is more of a recent issue, there is a lot of work that's going into randomizing memory addresses to increase security. In the event of a security hole, randomized memory addresses make it far more difficult to take control of the machine as a hacker, virus, or worm can't use a hard-coded memory address during the attack. With a pre-built boot-up image, the memory addresses will not be randomized, which defeats a lot of the gain of this security benefit.
That said, you could just use hibernation on your computer. That is essentially the same thing as what you're asking for. A desktop is just as capable of sleeping or hibernating as a laptop is. The only thing is, if you want to make any hardware changes, you must remember to turn on the machine and do a complete shutdown first.
Also, there are companies who are focusing on bootup speed. In fact, every major Linux distro has been focusing on it for the last year or two. It's unfortunately just not that easy to speed things up without sacrificing stability or functionality.
STR (Score:5, Insightful)
If you need to reboot, you're rebooting for a reason - likely because something in that "50 to 75 MB" has changed.
Of course, if your box doesn't support suspending to ram, then hibernation is an ok alternative. But sometimes hibernate can be just as slow, if not slower than rebooting.
end of line.
Windows does a lot of writes when booting (Score:5, Interesting)
Valid point (Score:4, Interesting)
Some will say hibernation gives the same facility, but (at least with Windows) a clean boot needs to be done fairly often (when using a Windows development box, I reboot it daily).
A history of startup time (Score:5, Interesting)
In the beginning, say from Edison's development of the electric lighting system, through the invention of the fractional-horsepower motor which enabled the development of home appliances such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines, most things started up in a fraction of a second.
Then came vacuum-tube-based electronics, which took a minute or two to warm up.
Then came the "solid state" revolution, and, once again, things started up instantly. WIth the exception of television sets, which had a vacuum-tube-based "picture tubes" in them. However, manufacturers soon developed circuits that kept a small amount of current flowing to keep the filament partially warm while the set was "off," producing "instant-on" televisions.
Early hobbyist computers were instant-on, too. Before diskette drives were common, the machine had everything it needed to boot stored in ROM and was up displaying some kind of welcome prompt within a fraction of a second. Even when the serpent entered Eden in the form of "operating systems," startup was quick. When you turned on an 48K Apple ][+ with a diskette drive and spiffy Apple DOS 3.3, there was a brief "whish" as the disk spun and loaded a few K of code into the processor, and there you were.
It seems to me to be lazy design that says that booting consists of more than loading code into RAM and establishing state for the internal hardware. I have no idea why OSes must churn away for big fractions of a minute _running_ code. Why can't it just load a snapshot of the desired final state of RAM?
What really gripes me is that lately Windows and Mac OS X have taken to presenting an empty _illusion_ of a faster startup. What seems to be happening is that all the minute-long processes still churn away, but the processes that present the UI run in parallel. The result is that the visible desktop gets into a displayable and interactive state quickly. But while the UI seems to be ready, nothign else is... particularly anything to do with the local network. If you actually try to do anything on that desktop, you still encounter minute-long delays.
Gotta mention the obligatory Steve Jobs story here (Score:5, Interesting)
The story goes that the engineer working on the boot sequence for the original Mac was working late one night when Steve Jobs wanders past and asks how long the thing takes - the engineer is pretty happy that he's gotten it down to around 30 seconds (or however long it was) and that's probably good enough. Jobs then comments that they'll probably sell at least a million of these things - and each one will probably be booted a couple of times a day - and the machines will last maybe five years - so if he can save just one second more from the bootup time - that's equivelent to 113 years from the lives of Mac owners. So if you can save just one more second - that's like saving someone's life.
Talk about pressure!
But it's a serious point. The amount of human lifetimes that are wasted waiting for PC's to reboot is pretty horrifying - and there's a lot more than a million of them. Someone should take this seriously.
Re:Gotta mention the obligatory Steve Jobs story h (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Gotta mention the obligatory Steve Jobs story h (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
How many could it save... (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps those lifetimes aren't wasted by necessity but by negligence, laziness, and choice.
Parent
Re:Gotta mention the obligatory Steve Jobs story h (Score:5, Funny)
I just spent 30 seconds reading your post.
YOU BASTARD!
Parent
Re:Gotta mention the obligatory Steve Jobs story h (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if everyone in the world sits around and waits for it to happen every single time, and does absolutely nothing else with that down time. It doesn't count if you spend that time even THINKING about another issue/problem. You have to sit there motionless, stare at the screen, and do absolutely nothing but age.
Personally, I can find plenty of things to do with my time when I know I can walk away.
The more significant issue, IMHO, is the responsiveness of programs. Forget boot-up times, when you don't even have to be there. How about the delay between clicking the Firefox icon, and waiting for it to start-up so you can do useful work? How about the delay between clicking on a link, and having that link load and render? How about the ammount of time the system is unresponsive as it does something (like render a webpage) in the background?
That, IMHO, is many times more important, and something I certainly have to deal with far more often than reboots. Personally, I have a 2GHz system, with 1GB of RAM, and I still strictly stick with GTK-1 programs, because it's so much faster and more responsive than GTK-2 (or QT) equivalents (as well as not uselessly wasting screen realestate). Ever program I use has a fully functional GTK-1 equivalent, so I'm not missing out on anything by sticking with it, it's just an occasional hassle to change the default configure option, or using a different program because the new version of whatever dropped GTK-1 support (like switching from GAIM to Ayttm). It's a rare issue, and well worth the improved performance anyhow.
Parent
30 Seconds? (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for a large Fortune 500 company which does IT consulting. My work-issue laptop comes with a lot of baggage, including anti-virus, anti-spyware, automatic backup & disaster recovery, a special system update program, et cetera, et cetera.
How bad is it? It's like this: I can start my computer, and within about a minute, I get a standard XP pro login screen. After entering my username and password, I immediately get up and walk away, down a flight of stairs, out the door, and about a hundred yards to our campus cafeteria, where I'll buy a coffee. By the time I get back, my coffee is cool enough to drink, and my laptop is usually in a useable state.
How about instant OFF? (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time we had a power failure at work, I tried to shut down my Windows machine, which was on a UPS. For some reason, the machine decided at that very exact instant... apparently _after_ I selected shutdown... that it would be a good idea to download and install a system update first! There did not appear to be any way to interrupt the process. Knowing that the batteries on the UPS weren't what they usta be, I quickly turned off the CRT to reduce the load, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best.
It took the machine the better part of ten minutes to shut down. Fortunately the batteries held out. Heaven only knows what would have happened if power had been interrupted while it was in the middle of installing a system update.
Years ago the science writers used to tell us that we needn't be afraid of computers taking over the world because, after all, we could always shut off the power. Yeah, right.
Re:How about instant OFF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like I give a crap. When I tell a computer to shut down, I want it to _shut down_; I do not want to come back hours later and find it didn't do what I told it to.
This is particularly annoying in the morning when I've left my home PC running overnight doing video or 3D rendering, and it's swapped out vast megabytes of stuff to make room for a totally pointless disk cache (what's the point in swapping out programs to cache multi-gigabyte video files when I'm processing them from one end to another?), so when I tell it to shut down it first spends five minutes spinning up all the disks and swapping back in all the programs it swapped out... but if I head off to work while it's still shutting down I may come back in the evening to find it still sitting there telling me that some piece of crap little applet that I never even wanted to run crashed while shutting down.
That's even worse than the fact that it takes two or three minutes after logging back in in the evening before it stops thrashing the hard disk and I can actually do something useful. At least I can make coffee or something while it's booting up.
Parent
Re:How about instant OFF? (Score:5, Informative)
It's called "auto end task", and it's just a couple settings in the Windows registry. I've been using it successfully for a VERY long time now, and it works exactly as you'd want:
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/199
If the program doesn't end (30 seconds) after it gets the kill signal, it gets killed without requiring you to be there to hit the button.
Parent
Be serious (Score:5, Funny)
Why can't a computer turn on and off like a TV? (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, maybe not. The dumbest possible way is probably something like:
"why can't the compujigger turn on faster, like the whatchamavision?"
but still, it's pretty damn close.
I remember when. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Today I have an HP Jornada 820 built in 1999. It runs Windows CE, and it turns on faster than anything. You hit the on/off button and you are either on or off just like that. --Best of all, it holds open all of your documents and programs exactly as you left them. I feel confident not saving stuff because it's so rock-steady reliable. The little critter is run on Flash memory; no hard drives.
My PC. . ? Well now. . , that beast is slow. Very slow.
I thought electrons moved at the speed of light, so what's the hold up? I refuse to blame the hard drives; those things are usually faster than Flash memory. So what's up? Bloat-ware? Too much hardware to configure? Poor programming? All of the above?
I don't know, but I suspect that if engineers had their act together and were not constrained by the ridiculous way of doing things which are currently in place, we'd have much better machines available.
-FL
Yeah, why does it take so long? (Score:5, Funny)
i-RAM (Score:5, Informative)
According to Anandtech, booting with the i-RAM into Windows XP takes 9.12 seconds. [anandtech.com]
Re:Oh please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Oh please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Hibernate (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Hibernate (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I'm surprised no one has mentioned it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Slow? My ordinary, everyday IDE drives can read over 60 megabytes per second. That could fill my PC's entire memory in about fifteen seconds.
I suspect the real problem may be that the operating system is still paging in small parts of DLLs and programs rather than loading them all in one go. Loading 4k pages one at a time made sense when the operating system was a couple of megabytes, but when you're loading a hundred megabytes of crap off the disk just to get to the desktop, you'd be much better to load the entire thing in one go; disk seek times have improved by a factor of two or three in the same time that disk read speeds have increased by maybe a factor of a hundred.
Does Windows still do that?
Parent
Re:Errr.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, I remember using something closer to what the story is talking about, on the Amiga of all places; FastBoot [aminet.net] had you boot normally, then save a snapshot of the system at the end of the startup-sequence. Future boots would use this snapshot, which you generally didn't want to update at each shutdown -- you got 2-3s boot times, but each boot was clean. It worked surprisingly well for a scary hack
Parent
Re:Errr.... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Errr.... (Score:5, Informative)
No, they do not "keep the tube warm". Yes a TV might draw a few watts when in "off" mode due to the power supply for the digital logic section always being on. But just about every CRT based TV or monitor I have seen, except for maybe some real high end broadcast equipment, takes a few seconds for the tube to come up.
You definitely weren't around in the 60's and mid 70's when we watched the tube warm up and the displayed image grow from a small dot to the full size of the screen. Sometimes it would take 20 or more seconds before the picture stabilized. When you turned the TV off you got to watch the "boot" process in reverse as the display shrunk to a dot. It was a big deal when we got "instant-on" TV's.
Well yes, TVs used to take longer to fully power up, and didn't have dampening circuits to prevent CRT display after being turned off. They where basic fully analog devices, there was no logic that prevented the display of an image when the CRT was not yet in an operational state. In the 60's they would have been vacuum tube based (as in the whole TV, obviously a CRT is a vacuum tube) and taken a long time to fully warm up, and needed adjustment and retubing on a regular basis. In the 70's they would have been transistor based, and would have come up much faster, how ever they would still be fully analog and subject to the same power up and power down effects.
Modern TV's have digital control sections that can compensate on the fly for variations in the analog sections of a CRT display, and higher performance switching power supplies and fly-back circuits that come up to operating voltage much faster. But you still have at least a short wait for the CRT to come up, they are not kept on warm idle of any kind. At least not in any displays I have worked on.
I know this is probably getting off topic, but your post was marked +5 informative yet has miss information in it. Having worked on many CRT displays I just wanted to point out that the CRT is definitly not kept on any kind of warm stand-by, none that I have ever seen any way. What you are describing sounds similar to the stand-by mode in most guitar tube amps, where the heater filaments in the tubes are kept on to keep the tubes warm but the rest of the amp is powered down. I am not aware of this being done in modern CRT displays. Seems to me that if you did this it would dramaticaly shorten the CRT's life span, if the heater filaments were on 24x7x365. Someone correct me if I am wrong...
Parent
Re:TVs don't need to do very much (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Come on. Look square at the issue. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is old-school linear thinking we've inherited.
There is no technical reason that a computer could not wake up, verify the keyboard, memory, hd, mouse and display are the same (in a few microseconds, probably) and be up and responding very well to the user, while (new concept, brace yourselves) the computer carefully brings up other hardware subsystems and makes them available as they become functional. You could be in a word processor, graphics editor, all manner of things that don't require more hardware until you do something like print or attempt to access the network; if those subsystems are not ready when you try to use them, the design would allow for [establishing hardware, wait or cancel] and there you have it.
There is no problem whatsoever with plug and play concepts coexisting with fast usability other than current design shortcomings end users have been forced to live with. The computer is running as soon as the HD is spinning, memory sized, and the video card is on and the KB and mouse work. Just because current operating systems don't let you begin working at that time isn't a reflection on plug and play as a concept, it's a reflection of linear thinking that descends from old single tasking systems like early DOS.
The idea that a 2...3 GHz 32 or 64 bit CPU cannot bring itself to decent usability in under a second is one that is silly right on the face of it except in that common systems are using old school thinking and layering more and more crap on top of that thinking. There is not a thing in the world that says drivers can't be loaded on demand, or after usability from boot, or separately. Nothing.
Parent